At one time or another, many of us will have thought about dropping out of the rat race and journeying to a third world nation to work for impoverished people. Unfortunately, we tend to get a reality check when we start to envisage life without our creature comforts, internet and a regular income.
Still, a great many people in the UAE have decided to listen to their pleading conscience and sign up for a voluntary programme in an underdeveloped country. This ‘voluntourism’ trend is particularly apparent among teenagers; after all there’s no better time to get involved than before you have the millstone of adult responsibility around your neck, or working commitments and credit card bills to hold you back. More and more high school and university students are using their vacations to look after orphans, work in wildlife centres, build schools and the like. In fact, a recent study by Conde Nast Traveller magazine, found half of 1,600 teenagers interviewed said they’d like to do voluntary work overseas in the next few years.
A trio of students from the American Community College in Abu Dhabi – Natasha Topolski, Kirsten Brackett and Francine Leech, all aged 17 – have fulfilled their philanthropic dreams and have become heavily involved in charity projects overseas. Last November, they travelled to India with the Habitat for Humanity project, where they built houses for poor people in the Puducherry region of the country. In June, the girls are off on a two-week trip to Accra, Ghana, with the Projects Abroad charity where they will be working with children at an orphanage. Their roster will include painting and building a local orphanage, helping children with homework, and working with them at the care centres.
With one million orphans in Ghana, 160,000 children orphaned by Aids and only 62 per cent of Ghanaian children receiving basic education, there is clearly a need for help from abroad, and Natasha felt she and her friends could make a difference.
‘This charity came to our school and told us about their projects, so we felt really inspired to try to help them,’ she explains. ‘These are really poor people, and they need all the emotional support they can get. In this country, we tend to take everything we have for granted, so giving something back to people who don’t have anything is really important to us all. We were in India last year with Habitat for Humanity; it was a real eye opener to how much poverty there is in the world.’
Yet despite the good intentions of aid work, many claim that the rapid growth of voluntourism is actually harming impoverished communities. For example, a recent report by the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa stated that wealthy overseas volunteers took jobs away from local workers, while the abandoned children form emotional attachments to the visitors, who then increase their trauma by disappearing back to their home countries. So could the trend be more about the self-fulfilment of people from rich nations rather than the needs of developing nations?
But Natasha and her friends believe they will have a positive effect when they go to Ghana. ‘We’ve done our research into Projects Abroad, and it’s a very credible organisation. And when we were in India last year we were moved by the gratitude of the families and how our work had a significant effect on their lives. After witnessing the living conditions of the children, we are eager to do more elsewhere.’
For more information about Project Abroad, visit www.projects-abroad.org
Volunteering advice
Thinking of volunteering abroad? Here are five tips you should follow
1. Thoroughly research your organisation’s credibility. Find out if it is making a ‘real difference’
2. Find out where the funding goes. Credible charities always allow their finances to be accessed by the public
3. Check out the company’s safety records. Find out what measures are taken to keep volunteers safe from dangers such as wild animals or thieves
4. Find out what training will be given, as you might be unskilled in the job you’ve been assigned
5. Ask for the name of your expedition leader and then do some research on them. Find out what their credentials are
